So You Want to Build an App...

So you say you're looking to build an app and you have your idea fully flushed out. Laid out in the article ahead is the basic road map of what needs to get done to build your awesome app.

We always start with a conversation. The point of us doing this is to get a 10,000 foot view on what it is you are trying to accomplish with your app. What is it doing? Who is it for? Where's its future? By the end of the call we will either need more information or will have a good idea and will be ready to look at some technical documents.

This leaves us in the proposal phase. We will get you a nice shinny proposal to review, but we don't want you to run off to attempt to interpret this hefty sized document all on your own. We want to sit down and talk to you, walk you through everything in there, and cover what is going on and why. Often this is the best time for us to take up the consultant role and start to advise on what areas are missing or not needed at this point. It really lets us build a solid starting point for the rest of the process.

Ok, sweet! Let's get down to development. Wait! We still have to do UX/UI design first. This is often an area that gets quickly over looked due to people's general misconceptions. UI/UX design is often thought of as simply making something look pretty. (Nope!) UI/UX design is actually about crafting the look and feel of the application. This covers how the user navigates their way around the app and the overall experience they have while using it. More importantly figuring this out first will help shape how development is accompished.

UI/UX has been submitted, tossed back, resubmitted, questioned, lost, buried in mexico somewhere, found, edited and finally approved. Great, now let's develop. Nope, not yet! Wireframes still need to be created. We really take this time to plan out each page of the application and figure out the functionality and data on each one.

So now that we have our UI/UX design, wireframes, and feature/functionality list we know what we are building and how we are going to build it. Development can finally begin. This will be happening in several stages that the client can see milestones for. The first stage being the Alpha version of the app, which will only be the very core functionality and a whole lot of bugs. But don't worry next is the the beta version, which is much better. This version will have most of the functionality built out with some minor features still to come. It will still contain some bugs as well. Lastly we get the final version of the application, which has been QA'd, tested, and fixed to ensure a great first impression with your users/customers.

Now all that's left to do is to launch.... and then start the process over for version 2.

Tim Shipman
is a Yeti Alum.
Tim is an avid cyclist who enjoys exploring new, creative ways to apply technology to suit clients’ needs. When he's not in the Yeti cave, Tim can be found in front of a TV giving an in-depth analysis of the San Francisco 49ers to his Great Dane, Big.